notable, for its accordance with an Egyptian festival is
in itself so extraordinary as to render it very difficult to
regard it as a mere coincidence. Although therefore it
is far from probable that a Chinese scholar should de-
liberately adopt foreign, in the place of native titles, yet,
on the other hand, if the elements of the kalendar were
imported into China by its first civilizers from the more
primaeval country, nothing is more likely than that a man
so devoted to archaeology as Professor Legge describes
Szema Ch'ien to have been, should have hunted out these
■irchaic titles from the earliest records of China, and
should have endeavoured to bring them into use as more
correct terms, although possibly he himself may have
been unable to understand their meaning. In any case
the table, wherein the strange titles employed by Ch'ien
a*e paralleled with their phonetic equivalent in the
Egyptian tongue, and the translation of those equivalents
m the festival to which they seem to correspond, will
liable the reader to judge for himself how far the
-Egyptian key avails to open the Chinese lock which for
fifteen hundred years has been given up by the Chinese
experts.